Monday, May 9, 2016

Shared values

Clare Foges was one of David Cameron's speechwriters for seven years. She's written a strong piece about preserving the BBC in today's Times, which you must pay for to read all of it. I hope she and they won't mind me sharing the conclusion.

"I despair when Conservatives frame the BBC in the language of efficiency and subsidy, as the culture secretary did last week by calling it “a market intervention of around £4 billion”. I despair not just for the BBC, but for the party. Because when people talk about Tories knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing, it is exactly this kind of thing they mean. Trusted, loved, unifying national institutions do not spring fully formed from “the market”.

"Undermining the envy of the world would make us the idiots of the world. It would be like the US attacking Hollywood or France its wine producers. For less than 40p a day we get something that, as Lord Reith said: “may be shared by all alike . . . the genius and the fool, the wealthy and the poor . . . there is no first and third class.”